Previews

Civilization III: Conquests

Conquer the world -- again -- as we go hands-on with the second Civ III expansion.

Could Conquests be everything Play the World should have been? That will remain to be seen. From the beta build we've been playing, however, Conquests looks as though it just might be the incentive necessary to finally take the Civilization franchise out of the realm of "Player vs. Game" and into the eminently more satisfying "Player vs. Player."

Bugs and other issues aside, Play the World didn't turn out to be the online liberation of the turn-based strategy genre that Firaxis had hoped for. In large part, as Conquests producer Jesse Smith told us, "The games just took too long. It's hard enough to get people together to play a game for a couple hours ... it's even harder for a game that lasts 10 or 15 hours the way Civ can." Conquests aims to fix this by presenting players with new, scenario-driven maps and a host of changes to units and gameplay that should get everyone into the mode of "crush thy neighbor" pretty much right off the bat.

"These aren't random maps," says Smith, "They were designed so that after a certain number of turns players will have to collide." In our beta build, for example, the first conquest mission we played put us in Mesoamerica as head of the Mayans. The goal of this map isn't to control the resources or conquer the other civs (though you still can, of course), but rather, to take a token of the gods to one of the volcanoes in the center of the map and sacrifice it therein; bestowing good fortune as well as a large number of victory points upon your fledgling tribe. Obviously, each of the other three civs on the map are going to be attempting the same, so the "collision" Smith refers to happens quickly. This first game we played lasted about an hour and twenty minutes -- just enough time, as it turns out, for the game to build to a crescendo and to end with the winner feeling triumphant instead of bored and frustrated.

This collision, usually missing in PTW games, seems to have been the driving force behind most of the additions to Conquests. The conquests themselves are a series of scenario-driven maps, which in the single-player mode are played one after the other, and have limited choices for civilizations in order to keep the feel of each conquest authentic. Each conquest also has its own tech tree with unique advances specifically designed with the terrain and the civs available for that conquest in mind. This creates a truly unique world for each of them and prevents the sort of repetitious gameplay which would result if each map were merely different terrain, but the same ol' Civ all over again. Never a franchise willing to hard-dictate what kind of game the player will enjoy, all of the conquest maps can also be played with all the civilizations and regular tech tree available, affording some nice replay value as well as more options for those that want the unique scenarios in multiplayer but don't want to be limited to each conquest's compressed world.

But the "collision" enhancements don't end at the conquests or at the level of mapmaking. Stealth units (both modern and ancient -- that means ninjas!) and improvements to the air and naval units will help you get to your enemies faster, while new citizen types (civil engineer and police force) will help maintain a level of contentment at home so that your exploits overseas won't cause so much unrest and corruption. Aircraft and ships now also take twice as much damage in port, meaning that it's better to be exploring the open seas than "turtling" at home. Some new units also have the ability to enslave enemy units that you can then put to use -- either as sacrifices (a new city improvement is the sacrificial pit) for culture points, or as additions to your workforce. The privateer naval unit can also enslave units, turning enemy ships into willing conscripts. More wonders have also been added to the game. Some of them, like the Knights Templar, will even spawn units regularly, giving you free units to add to your armies. Add to that the ability to airlift workers and the naval transport of cruise missiles and Conquests becomes much more "in your face" than the predecessors in the franchise. And, if the game still proves too easy for you, two new difficulty levels have been added. Are you a "Demigod," or can you, in fact, beat the game on "Sid" mode -- claiming the bragging rights of being even better than the Civilization franchise's namesake?

Playing the conquests has been a hoot. Yes, a hoot! Though only four of them are available for the press build, the final product will have nine in total that will take players from the Pacific Theatre of WWII to feudal Japan and back -- hitting Byzantium and several eras along the way. Seven new civs will help keep opponents on their toes, and the addition of five new resource types will create tensions as the fights for who brings home the bacon collide (there's that word again) in new ways. Even in just these four scenarios included in the press beta, they've been good enough to go back and play again. The new victory conditions and shorter games have made the game an appropriate distraction instead of a mind-numbingly epic journey through time. Not to bad mouth epic journeys through time, but when you've only got a few hours after work each day to play a game with your friends, the more visceral the thrill to be had in that timeframe the better. Hopefully, the rest of the conquests will measure up.

Yes, let the blood flow!

To assure the continued growth of the Civ mapmaking community, all the units, tiles, resources, victory conditions, tech trees, etc. available in the conquests will be added into a new improved map editor, hopefully adding even more to the replayability. With all this new gameplay available, Conquests may not only make up for the shortcomings of Play the World, it may surpass it in both quality and quantity. Play the World in its entirety, minus the fan-made maps, is included in Conquests, so if Smith and his team succeed in creating "a whole game and an entirely new way of playing Civilization," it should be worth keeping track of this expansion until its release during the last few days of October. And, at a price of $29.99, the franchise may pick up some new fans along the way.